A special instance of "perceptual work" and its quantification
Date
1975
Authors
Safayeni, Farough Rassoulian
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Abstract
The attempt was made to quantify the relative amount of "perceptual work" involved in placing items of different degrees of difference together. A 5 x 5 grid was considered as a structure in which the parts differ only with respect to location. A numbering system was proposed as a method of describing the locational property of each part relative to the structure. Permutations ~ere adopted as special mathematical transformations which were applicable to the description of certain locations. The permutational relationship between location~ reflected the relative amount of perceptual work necessary to transform one location into another The general hypothesis was that those locations would he perceived as most similar which required least perceptual work to make them identical. This was tested in two experiments. In the first experiment 24 subjects chose between two locations the one which they perceived as being most similar to a target location. A binomial test of the responses was significant (p <.006). In the second experiment 12 subjects were required to categorize 8 locations with no restrictions on the number of categories that they could make. Following this~ half of the subjects were required to place the stimuli in 3 categories, half in 5 categories. Two measures were recorded: the time it took to make each category and the number and type of locations included in each category. A one tail t-test of the time difference was significant (p < .0005). A binomial test (p <.02) indicated that the most frequent groupings were those based on minimizing perceptual work.